Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Beauty Tech Innovation: Turning Skincare Ideas Into a Mobile App with Vanessa Cancio

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Beauty Tech Innovation: Turning Skincare Ideas Into a Mobile App with Vanessa Cancio · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, and welcome back to the growth class.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: And today we're diving into a sector that is notoriously noisy and overwhelming.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Skincare.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Our guest today spent nearly a decade leading national accounts for some of the biggest CPG brands in the world, including Walmart, Amazon.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: But she saw a massive gap between what brands sell and what consumers actually need.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: So now she's the co-founder and CEO of Vayne, a beauty tech platform that's stripping away the guesswork through data-driven personalized diagnostics.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: So please welcome Vanessa Cancio.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is it Cancio or Cancio?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Cancio, no, you said it perfectly.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're are you're Italian, correct?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colombian-Cuban, but the last name is from Northern Spain, from Asturias.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Ah I think it's.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I get that a lot up here.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Up here, everyone thinks I'm either Italian or Greek.
• 1:11
  unknown: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Italian, I think it would be Cancio.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: You're right, exactly.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So what it's funny because when I was living in Dallas, no one ever said that, and then I moved to New York, and all of a sudden I'm like, where did that come from?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, it's because people think I'm Italian.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So but no, you said it perfectly.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Especially down in Mulberge Street.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody will be calling you Cancio.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Vanessa Cancio.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly, exactly.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't you take us back a little bit into your uh your history, your background, and um and let's uh have an understanding of who you are, what you've done, and then what you're trying to do with Vane.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know you're going through sort of a pivot from when we spoke.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: You started out one way, and I think that you're pivoting, which I think is a a brilliant way to do it.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so my background is all in marketing, sales and marketing.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: So with specifically within the consumer world, more in food and bev.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I started out my career at Pepsi Co.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um on the brand side, uh, doing just as a marketing analyst, which at first I didn't want to do all the numbers, but it's actually proven to be some of the most helpful skills that I've had in understanding how businesses work and the levers to pull.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I did that for about three years, and towards the end of that, I was on the closer to the retailer side.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So doing shopper marketing.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew that I wanted, as much as I was, as much as I was learning and enjoying my time there, I knew that I wanted to get a little bit closer to the digital side of marketing.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so knowing, you know, okay, that's kind of this is circa 2018, 2019.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, I want to get closer to that.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's like, you know, a lot of D2C companies were blowing up.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I got recruited to Anheuser Busch to lead their Walmart e-commerco nationwide.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I did that, um, which was like my dream job at the point, and that moved me from Dallas to New York.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I remember thinking, I was like, I don't even know where I go from here.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: This was my dream job.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's nothing else, like I'm good.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it was incredible.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I did that for about two years and then moved on to lead Amazon and GoPu, which was quite an experience because within two months of handling those accounts, they both trip uh doubled in size.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon went from just being online to then opening nine Amazon fresh stores, like brick and mortar stores, and then GoPu was had primarily just been online, and then they acquired Liquor Barn in Kentucky and then Bevmo in California.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So they doubled in size and had brick and mortar overnight.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and doing the omnichannel experience was was incredible.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so before, and by then I had already had the idea for Vane and really like kind of from my own personal experience of just being frustrated with the skincare industry and and the number of options and being so overwhelmed with ads and whatnot.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was because I was about 25, 26s during the pandemic, and I started breaking out like crazy all on my chin, and like looking back now is clearly very hormonal, but it was weird because I had never really dealt with acne in high school.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, wait, I'm a full-blown adult.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I dealing with acne now?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I freaked out, and thank God, you know, everyone was wearing masks, and or I could just put like some filter on Zoom or something.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I started really looking into it of like, okay, what products should I be using?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: What brands, you know, are good for me?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I would spend hours doing research and Googling.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, I got on TikTok, like most people during COVID, and I realized that all the comments on TikTok were asking the same questions I was asking.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so it said, okay, great, then something needs to happen here.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Except at that point I loved my job, and so I was like, that's a great idea.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm onto the side.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward a few years, say three years, three or four years, the idea wouldn't leave me alone.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I had yet to see a solution in the market.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, this is something that I need to kind of just solve.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, I had always wanted to start my own company.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I just was waiting for the right idea.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: My dad's an entrepreneur as well, so I grew up around that.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I knew how important it is to be passionate about what you're building because the journey is so hard.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have to really believe in it.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, all right, if this idea hasn't left me alone for about three years and it's still bothering me, I think we should probably see this one out.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so fast forward, left my company, left Anheiser Busch, started the company, um, had a lot of ups and downs, actually built an MVP, had a co-founder, a co-founder breakup, built an MVP after a small friends and family round.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and actually within the last month, month and a half, actually since I think we last spoke, we did away with that MVP and actually launched our app.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a brand new app with our pivot.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: So what we used to be was essentially a platform that used AI to connect people to the right skincare products based on their skin type and skin issues.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: What we are now, what happened was that we realized people really loved the recommendation engine, but they didn't want to have to buy a new product every single time they came to Maine.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's understandable.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted to understand, okay, I bought these products now.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: How are they actually working for me over time?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we, my co-founder and I, we're like, okay, well, why don't we make a um a tracker?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't we make a tracker?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that'll help people understand how those products are working for them.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, as we were building out, we're like, well, we want to put this and put that.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we were like, you know what?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've been putting this off of building an app.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is the time, let's do it.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we actually, with that build of the app, completely pivoted to a skin health tracker from a platform from like a marketplace to a skin health tracker.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, that's where we are now.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I actually we just applied to the Apple store last week.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, already got rejected once, which we love that, but we resubmit it again.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, that's that's where we are, and that's how we got here.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: You got rejected from the Apple store once?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you said?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, for for the app, right?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, for the app.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, most people put it on Google Play first and work out the kinks because it's it's more difficult to be on Apple uh than it is on the Google Play Store.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because we do a lot of app work for, well, we do a lot of marketing for apps and stuff, and yeah, everybody, it's always been that way.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: People put it on the Google Play Store first, work out the kinks, get it right, and then put it on Apple because Apple is a little bit more difficult.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you can get it on Google Play and you get it working on Google Play, then Apple's more apt to uh to actually accept it.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll have to tell Sarania that.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have to tell my co-founder that.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's a pain in the neck, you know.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: You have to, yeah, they really uh they make it difficult.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: They go through every every part of it.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: And all a lot of it has to do with data collection and how you're collecting and what you're doing with that data and you know, that that type of stuff.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And where they don't have access to it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's an interesting business.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, having been in the uh beauty business for many, many years, I think that uh it's it's always uh it's always been an issue.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and um you know, where do people go to get the information?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh generally when a brand comes out, they do a lot of content focused around their brand and their products, not necessarily the landscape.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where the problem becomes because people can get a lot of information about a brand, but not necessarily the the overall landscape.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or like the problem, right?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not really focused on you as an individual.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: To your point, it's focused on the brand and just the benefits that the brand can do for you.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: They all start to sound the same.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Where it's like, okay, every brand is telling me they can do the same thing.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Which one do I actually buy?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Which one's worth the money?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Is it are the more expensive ones better because they're more expensive, or can I get away with something cheaper and it works just as well?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I mean, exactly.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's um uh you know, I think that like glossier uh what was her name, Emily.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: She I I think started out for because it was a side gig for her.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: She was working, she would talk about it.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and she would talk about beauty and skincare and things like that, and she was objective, and then she decided she came out with her own product line.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: But after she had, I think she had like a million followers.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she had a ton.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then she when she launched, you know, she had a built built-in market.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was great, it was fantastic.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I think she did it, you know, did it the right way.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that it's really tough for people again.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: The weird thing is I have I have four daughters and a wife.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's funny because being because I was in the beauty business for so long, we were a natural brand, and so we're very um I've I've always been because I you know, we had to maintain um we had a um we had a partner, Carol Alt, and she was a raw foodist, and she had written books on the raw food, and she lived the raw food lifestyle, so she was very, very picky about the ingredients, and she was in she was on the sales and marketing side because we launched on a shopping channel, so she was the face of the brand, but she was also an owner.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I had to be the one figuring out like the ingredients and coming up with something new and understanding it, so I got really good at it, and having all these uh girls in my life, they all come to me for advice before they buy beauty products about what I would too.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: I would too.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: They have a built-in expert at home, it's great.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I know, and it's just so funny, especially when they tell their friends at college and stuff, you know, I can't get that until I talk to Phil about it.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So and uh it's hysterical because they all sit there going, What?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they always call they all call me Phil.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's awesome.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as they got to be 18, they all started calling me Phil.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a rite of passage.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when they they don't not at home, but at when they talk to their friends, they all call me Phil.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's so funny.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it is funny.
• 11:41
  unknown: Yeah.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: But uh no, I agree with you.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that you know, having a sort of some sort of uh and I think AI lends itself to that because it can answer the questions that people need.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, oh a hundred percent.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, my my co-founder can speak to this a lot better than I can, being that she's what I call the I say that she's the brain and I'm the personality hire, um, mostly just because her background is all within the data side, and she's get currently about to finish getting her PhD in AI at Carnegie Mellon.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: So she's the one that's actually coding it all, building the algorithms uh for the AI model.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and but it exactly to your point, right?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I think, I think when I first had the idea, there was no real way to do it other than matching and doing some type of code in the back.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: But AI in 20, what, this is 2021, 2022, was not really as big of a thing as it is now.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't using it in our day-to-day life as it is now.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't as big of a thing.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: We were still on web 3, on crypto.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, you know, NFTs and whatnot back then versus which didn't really quite pan out the way everyone thought.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but with how much technology has advanced, especially within AI recently, it's been incredible of what we can do.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, my co-founder had never built an app before.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: She has, she's coded, she knows how to do that, but she had never actually built an app before.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And she was able to vibe code it.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if it started from like, oh, I don't know how long it's gonna take me to build this app.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we were like, all right, what are all the other contingencies, right?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what do we need to be doing in order to just like move forward?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, over a weekend, she had gone on a trip and on her the plane ride, I got back and she literally had just like sent me this screen uh recording of an app and I go, cool, what app is that?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, ours.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how did that happen?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she literally built it just based off of vibe coding and you know, obviously prompting AI in the right way.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And she swears by Claude to her.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: She, if you ask her, she goes, I don't trust any other AI to be building this with me other than Claude.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it's it's incredible.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we would have been able to do this a year ago, even to this extent.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I mean, uh I think that um you know the LLMs have been out for a lot longer.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: People started using around 2019, 2020.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: I remember there was uh I can't remember the name of it, but it was one of the earlier ones before um before OpenAI came out with Chat GPT, but and you know, people were like writing content with it, which was fine, right?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but there was so much more to it.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and you know, the thing that drives me insane is we started using it about seven years ago in our company, and it took us building workflows and building agents and things and to try and figure out how to make things more efficient, how to save time, how to save money, um, not necessarily get rid of people, what's the right use of AI for marketing and advertising and things like that.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it took us really three years of work to figure out how to implement agents and workflows that actually are meaningful, that actually do something positive to a business, right?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And now everybody who's like read an article about AI is an expert in it, and it drive it drives me insane because I sit there, you know, people contact me all the time on LinkedIn and you know, email.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: We can build agents for you that'll save you millions of dollars.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you go, you know, you look at their background, it's like they've been, you know, six months ago they were working in an RB's, and now they become an AI agent expert.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, it took us three years, but you figured it out in six months.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, it just doesn't it doesn't work that way.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it drives me insane.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, AI is a great tool.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, I agree with I agree with your partner, Claude is is much more um, I think it's a much better tool.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think chat from what we see, Chat GPT is moving in a different direction.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna move into the direction of advertising and uh search for brands, which so it'll be like Google.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um but Claude is moving in the direction of solving problems.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's drastically different how I use them.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I use chat as more of like just to bounce ideas off of where I'm like more personal of like, oh, I'm thinking of this.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of go goes back and forth versus Claude.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I actually work where I have my projects, I have you know, something of just even automating things of my investor updates, some of like my LinkedIn updates where I'm like, I don't have time to fully write this out, but this is I've written these articles, take this, my tone of voice, my personality, and this is what I want you to talk about because these are the things we've done.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it and I can go back and edit it and make it sound more like me.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it just make it helps me move 10 times faster.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and especially things that like an investor update that has more of a formula, right?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Where it's like, okay, this is something that I don't need to be spending so much time on, but these are the updates.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just pull it together for me and I'll review and edit and send out?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's yeah, it's been great, not only as like you know, co-working, but also from a product perspective.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: So um what do you think your biggest um obstacle to growth is?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or the biggest, let's say the biggest um the biggest challenge to getting people to uh to use your your product is I I I think right now it's visibility and awareness is really like our biggest thing right now.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um so for example, we actually just closed on a partner this morning for our official launch.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're partnering with three different brands, and now in the app you can do courses and essentially say, like you can do a 14-day course, a 21-day course with either a creator or a brand.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: That allows not only for the stickiness, but also allows us to co-brand and co-market with someone else.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we have been doing, knowing that we're so small, we don't have the budget to be spending on paid ads the way that most companies can.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, how else are we driving visibility?
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't think paid ads we kind of discourage that with people.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, paid ads, you can't scale a business with paid ads.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: You'll go broke.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: And there's so many other opportunities out there today that we didn't have, you know, 10 years ago that we have today, especially video on social media.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's so many more ways to get this done than trying to use paid ads.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not an advocate.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're a support mechanism, they're not your driver.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: But even from a support, right?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, okay, we have like our main assets.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: We still can't, we don't have the budget to be driving that, right?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the way that we've been doing is partnering with brands, um, which we have two brands.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: We've closed one this morning, we're about to close another one on Friday.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very excited.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a third one, a big one, which I'm not gonna put into existence until it actually happens so that I don't jinx it.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm I'm hoping I'm crossing my fingers that it happens.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so, and with creators.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, one of my good friends from my PepsiCo days, he is an awesome marketer.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was a brand marketer at PepsiCo and then Boston Beer Company, and he then went on to become a full-time content creator.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, he was building it on the side and then was able to sustain himself fully.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: But he knows how brands think, but also knows how to work it as a creator.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So he's come on as our brand ambassador and as our advisor to help us grow and reach that audience that we wouldn't really be able to do naturally.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or I don't have the experience in that aspect, right?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Marketing's so different than social.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Social is a beast on its own.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Where I think a lot of a lot of marketers used to just kind of file it under marketing versus now it's like, no, no, there's a whole other strategy.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: You need to actually understand all the different platforms, how those algorithms work, also the different audiences that you have on those.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we've brought him on board.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: He has an audience of over 200,000.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: So even having him talk about us, be posting how he's working with us.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for example, with the launch, we're planning, he's running, he's an athlete, so he's running the um Boston Marathon.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we're planning, hopefully, if everything goes right with the App Store, um, we're trying to do more of like a bigger launch at the end of April, middle of April, but end of April.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: But we're hoping that, okay, he's running the Boston Marathon.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone asks him, how do you train?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do for your skin?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: What do you wear?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: All these things.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: How do we then take advantage of that opportunity and say, okay, well, if you're already going to be talking about the Boston Marathon, then you should talk about recovery after the Boss Marathon.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: What are you doing after it?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that should include your skin.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's like our entire um angle with him.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're doing something similar with those brands that have larger audiences than us, and it makes sense for them to partner with us.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: For example, this morning, the partner we closed on, they were like, actually, we keep hearing from consumers that they want to understand how the products are working for them over time.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were about to build our own tracker, but this is amazing because you guys have it.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, yeah, and we can partner together on it.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just like good timing.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, we're we're really trying to leverage what we can in order to get our name out there and just get users onto the platform.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's great.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's absolutely uh a challenge today to in some ways to get visibility, but at the same time, if you have something that's completely different and you know, there's no challenger out there, then it's it's actually not as difficult.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's the people that struggle are the ones that are just selling the same old, same old.
• 21:31
  unknown: Right.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you're just selling the same old, same old, you just get lost in the in the conversation.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, nobody cares.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's why we want to be different.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: All of our marketing pillars are very much about like the first one is about shifting skin from beauty to health, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, how do we actually rethink it?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or also destigmatizing skincare.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Where like a lot of men are getting into skincare more now than ever because they realize that it is part of health, but they there's still some feeling.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I talk to men and do customer calls, it's always like, Well, I just, you know, girls have been doing it for so much longer.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Well, yeah, our society allows girls to do it for so much longer.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember being in middle school and looking at like a teen vogue or like, you know, whatever, a cosmopolitan and looking at like what's the latest skincare trend versus guys aren't getting into it until their 20s, maybe if not, more 30s, when they start seeing the first signs of aging, and they're like, oh my God, I don't want to, you know, age badly.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let me start taking care of myself.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're trying to also say, okay, how do we not only position skincare as health, but also destigmatize it and make people feel more comfortable, both men and women, to use skincare.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's gonna be a tough one.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: We were in the men's uh skincare business for a long time.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh because we got into the we were in the shaving business, but really what we were selling was you know the the ultimate shave and the routine.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't care so much about the razor as much as I did about all the other stuff.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um and we had another brand called Menzone, which was more of a drugstore type brand, but it's tough to, you know, to get that even for shaving, to get a guy to care.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like when a guy is in high school and he starts to grow a little bit of hair, he wants to shave.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: But then he loses that after about a year.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, that's a pain in the ass, so I'm just gonna let it go.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's not until they're then they shave every once in a while, and their girlfriend tells them to shave, and you know, things like that happen, but it's not until they're 28 years old where they get serious about looking good every day, and that's gonna be a tough one to overcome.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because and also they don't have the money and they don't really value it, right?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: A guy who's still in college is not gonna take, you know, 20 bucks and buy skincare when he could go out and buy a case of beer.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, totally, totally.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's also like when we think about our audience, our audience is a little bit older.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we have well, it's I would say it's varied.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the brand that we closed on this morning uh is actually a tween skincare brand, which is really cool.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all about like how tweens want to get into skincare, but a lot of the products are really harsh for their skin.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that makes sense.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the other ones that we're partnering with are geared towards, I'm not gonna say older, but just like I would say late 20s to like early late 30s, early 40s, where you start to your point, one caring, and two, having the money to be able to care, right?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can care about something, but if you don't have the disposable income to actually do anything about it, so no, we definitely have realized that because when we first, when we were doing the marketplace, we actually were targeting college kids.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, oh, that's the first time that they're leaving their house and making the you know decisions on their own, and they don't have a huge budget, so that means that they need to be more careful about what they're buying.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: We realized over a few months one, college kids don't have the budget to really pay for anything, so they just want anything that's free.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And two, um, they look good, so they don't care that much.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not gonna spend money on something if they don't need to, to your point, if they can just go and buy a pick, you know, a case of beer.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then third, they care about whatever trendy, they just want to do what's cool.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the information side of it of oh, for your own skincare type, they're like, I don't care what my skincare tear my skincare type is, like my skin looks great.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like I don't, I don't need that yet.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Which it makes sense.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we were like, okay, we need to come back to the drawing board and let's see who's actually interacting with us.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guys, you know, see, with with with young women, it's different because, like you said, they they they look at Teen Vogue, they they watch, you know, influencers, they talk, they so they get the push for skincare and makeup and cosmetics, and and people start talking about there's a million YouTube channels for makeup artists and talking about the good, the bad, but not so much for guys.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: And until you start getting um sports figures that they look up to, right?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Until you start getting sports figures to start saying, you know, I moisturize or I use this or I use that, they're not gonna, they're not gonna, you're not gonna get them any earlier, you know, and you're better off sort of honing in on that age group where you know you're gonna get them, right?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's true, it's just funny when you when you look at it as a graph, guy, and I'm again, I'm I'm just I'm going back to sort of shaving, right?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, when everybody people used to say to us, you know, you know, who's your target customer?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: What and they expect you to say, well, everybody shaves, so everybody's our target customer.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I used to say, no, it's it's 28 to 45, because below that, they don't care.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna change their routine.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like we had, you know, pre-shave, post-shave, we had all these great things.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: They just don't care.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: You get a very small uh percentage.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Mom buys them something for a stocking stuff or maybe, and but they never rebuy it.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: And over 45, those people are set in their ways.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna change.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: They haven't done yet, they're not going to.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a guy's been using a three-blade razor for 20 years, and he's been using you know, Gillette foamy shave cream.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't he doesn't care.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's gonna be hard to change him.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: But that that 28 to 45, those guys are ripe for changing.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: And because we never sold foamy shave cream.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: We should we should so sold a moisturizing shave cream that was you know great for the face, both one for men, one for women.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um, same thing with aftershave and all that.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it was more like cremo and and and what those guys were doing, and just that we sold razors uh on top of it.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: So the point is like you, and then you you gotta go into the market of where you know you have the best chance of converting those people.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then as time goes on, they'll trickle down.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you if you have a guy who's 25, 26, 27, he starts using skincare, and he's got a brother who's 22, and the brother's like, What are you using?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden, you know, it'll start tricking trickling down.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's it's really amazing because when you go through the history of sort of men's grooming, right, and you start getting into the you know, women have always groomed.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's always been that way, right?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's been pressure, societal pressure, all that stuff.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: But men never had that societal pressure.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: But in the in the 70s, when because guys were just using like single blade razors, right?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Then in the 70s, you had Joe Namath, the professional football player, talking about, you know, his his uh uh shave cream and all that.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, you know, men's uh uh men's products for shaving started to spike.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then as they got, then when you look at what Old Spice did, started they they started that about 15 or 20 years ago.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that sort of really expanded the whole men's thing, right?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then you had you had axe jumping in there and you had all those other ones, and you you started to get this younger audience, so but it was mostly deodorant and uh things like that.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so I think you're you know you're right, it's just gonna take a little bit longer to get those younger guys.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Totally, totally.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And well, and then that that's why it's like, okay, well, then who does it make sense to partner with, right?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And like to get those guys.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I don't think when we think of like who our target audiences, the guys are secondary.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the women are are are primary, and then it's like, okay, we'll get some of the boyfriends, the husbands, that way.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you ask them, a lot of guys are just using whatever their girlfriend, sister, wife tells them to use.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, all right, well, that's that's one way to get them.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other way is all right, well, to your point, when you see a football player or someone that you look up to all of a sudden using these things and caring, you feel like, oh, I should be caring about that as well.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we've even explored of how to partner with a few athletes.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's further down the road, one thing at a time.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, yeah, no, no, no.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh that's that's the the right thing to do.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, certainly women.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Women are are uh, you know, that's the primary are bread and butter, essentially.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: But even for men, you know, I was having this conversation with um uh uh a person who runs a man's brand, and it's hysterical to me because you know women actually women men do what women tell men do what women tell them to do.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, women will say that shirt does not look good on you, and they'll you know, they'll buy them a new shirt.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: You need to buy this, you need to do this.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's you know, if if because if it were just up to men, they'd all dress sort of the same, you know, we'd be in shorts and t-shirts all day long with sneakers.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it is funny how women influence the whole thing.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: So uh even moms, you know, moms are gonna start influencing young men, or and they they still do, like my you know, I have one son, and my wife used to buy stuff for him to use, you know, and still does, and uh even though he's out of college, but you know, still does, but it's whether or not he uses it, or you know what I mean?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: So because they have to care, they have to actually get to a point, and I'll he has his first serious girlfriend.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh she it's amazing.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: We laugh about it all the time because we call it, we we say, you know, his name in 2.0.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, his girlfriend has like totally changed him.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, it's amazing.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love it.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: The way he dressed, the way he dresses, the way he wears his hair, the way he talks, what the things he does.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's like we sit there going, you know, all this time we've been telling him to do all these things, he doesn't care.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: But now that a girl told him that he's interested, yeah.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: A girl that he's interested in told him to do something, he's like, Oh yeah, I'll do that.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, we're we're I'm sorry, but we're almost out of time.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, all good in a little bit.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was a good conversation.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Any uh last minute things you want to talk about?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Your website, where can people find you?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: All those stuff.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: So people can find us at vainmarket.com, and then hopefully we will be in the app store soon enough to download us.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: So TVD on that, but in the meantime, you can check us out on our on our website.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent, excellent.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate you taking the time to come on.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was a great conversation.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: I love talking about uh beauty products and uh that whole industry.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's great.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my pleasure.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we'll see you next time.